Not all things are what they seem
by Something-Wicked
Summary: Updated! Sarah's daughter is thrown into the Labyrinth and finds that not all her mother's stories were true.
1. Chapter One

This is my fanfiction of Labyrinth. None of the characters from the movie are mine, the rest are. Please don't sue me, I have 35 cents.  
  
A/N: I've done a crapload of editing, so if you've read it before, read it again and see what's different! If you haven't, enjoy my new and improved EINWIS.  
  
~Chapter One~  
  
Jareth looked down at the sleeping girl. She was smiling peacefully and cuddling her teddy-bear.  
  
"Gwen, Sarah's daughter." He thought, "She looks like her mother..." Under his intense stare she squirmed uncomfortably, even in her sleep.  
  
"I already affect her. Good." Jareth looked up at her walls and his eyes widened in shock, then narrowed. There was a portrait of himself, and the signature underneath read,  
  
"To my dearest daughter, your curiosity about Jareth is my gift to you, on your eighth birthday. Love, Mom" He looked down at the sleeping girl.  
  
"She told you about me?" He inquired to her prone form softly, his British accent barely audible. As if to answer him she growled in her sleep and began slowly moving, fighting the demons of her dreams. He sat down on her bed, his weight making her roll against him.  
  
"Shh..." He comforted, putting one gloved hand on her forehead. Immediately she quieted. "Soon enough, you will join me little one. Soon enough."  
  
Gwen woke up from her dream in a cold sweat. Pulling the sweaty sheets over her naked body, she glanced around her room. There was no one there.  
  
"I could have sworn there was someone here..." She mumbled. Sighing, she leaned back on her pillow.  
  
"What a strange dream, goblins and a maze. Just like mom told me..." The simple thought of the Labyrinth made her heart speed up. She hoped one day Jareth would come for her just as he had her mother. Her eyes roamed over the room to rest on the glowing red letters of her clock. "Two o'clock? I'm never going to get back to sleep." But sleep was, to her, over rated and she got up and arranged her paints and brushes.  
  
"Now," She murmured to herself, tapping a slim finger to her soft lips. "What did that statue look like exactly?" Gwen she asked the canvas, then grinned. "Like Jareth..."  
  
Sarah woke up to a loud crash. Jumping up from her bed, she threw on her housecoat and ran to her daughter's door. She heard muttering and banging coming from inside the room. "Honey? You ok?" She asked softly, in case her daughter was in one of her 'moods' again.  
  
"Yeah ma, I'm fine, just doing some painting." Sarah nodded before realizing that her daughter was still on the other side of the door.  
  
"May I come in?" She inquired, knowing Gwen loved to paint in the nude. "Sure." Sarah opened up the door and smiled at her child. It seemed like yesterday when Gwen was just a little girl, running into the house caked with mud and proudly presenting a frog to her, or at her first recital, where she learned to play flute. Sarah could still clearly see her daughter's glowing brown eyes when she gave her first painting of a goblin to her mother. Sometimes Sarah did wonder about how the Labyrinth stories effected Gwen, but she would rather her daughter be prepared, if ever taken. She was still her child.  
  
"No longer a child," She realized, "Gwen's older then I was when I traveled the Labyrinth."  
  
"What are you painting?" She voiced aloud, attempting to cease her train of thought. "Uncle Toby, it's his birthday present." Sarah felt a smile light her face, her daughter had captured Toby's careless grin and laughing eyes perfectly.  
  
"Was that freehand?" She asked, guessing the answer before Gwen even spoke. Gwen shook her head and her mother smiled.  
  
"I got Uncle Toby to pose for me for the first sketches, but I told him it was because I needed to work on my form." Gwen smirked at her own glib excuse, and then smiled sweetly at her mother. Sarah laughed at her daughter's antics and smiled back, pleased.  
  
"If Jareth takes her he'll have quite a load on his hands." She thought smugly, and began to examine Gwen's painting. Gwen looked at her mother, and she suddenly felt a prickling at the back of her neck, as if there was a feather being drawn across her nape. Pulling her red Chinese-silk robe, a Christmas present from her father, closer around her she got up and looked out the window. The scene was comfortingly familiar, the trees surrounding the house, the glimpse of the road and her next-door-neighbor's uncut front lawn. Shaking her head at her own fantasy, she turned to her mother. "What's for breakfast, mom?" Sarah smiled at her, looking up from the unfinished painting.  
  
"You'll find out soon enough little one, soon enough." Inexplicably, Gwen felt a shiver sweep through her and pulled her robe a little tighter around herself.  
  
"I should put some clothes on, it's getting cold." She thought and walked to her dresser. With her focus on clothing and Sarah's on the painting, neither of them noticed the snow white owl departing from the oak tree outside her room and flying away into the distance.  
  
*****  
  
Jareth watched her, it had become almost a hobby for him. Or a war tactic; study the enemy. She had obviously been learning what little Sarah knew about him from a very young age. He watched her, wandering around her dull little life and felt his heart flip. She was so normal she was strange. She had few friends, more liable to be lost in a book or a sketch then with a friend, just like her mother was. She was artistic, a painter, an actor, a singer. Oh God, a singer. Sarah had married a man who sang in the New Opera. Even though it gave her daughter a beautiful singing voice, he knew that she had married him for his voice. Still, Jareth got nothing but pleasure when he thought of how Gwen's voice would be all his own when she lost in the Labyrinth. His own little song bird. If the mood swayed him, he might even keep her in a gilded cage. She would appreciate the irony, Jareth was certain. He was certain of many things. He was certain that when he took her into the Labyrinth that she was going to fail. He was certain that he would enjoy the look on Sarah's face when her daughter became eternally lost to him. He even knew when he was going to take her to his domain. Soon she would be going to a rave, an all night party that reminded him of All Owls night, and goblins getting drunk on owl wine. She would dance, and he would join her.  
  
It was then when she would join him, lose to him, learn to fear him.  
  
Gwen was walking up to the warehouse, decked out in black denim, leather and chains, with her flock of friends when something glittered out of the corner of her eye.  
  
"I'll be right back guys," She yelled and her friends waved her on. Gwen walked quickly over to where she saw the glimmer and picked up a smaller then fist-sized unmarked crystal globe. Slipping it into her black messenger bag she glanced around.  
  
"Hello? Someone out here lose a crystal ball?" She asked the darkness tentatively. When no one answered, she shrugged and waked into the rave.  
  
"Holy shit, did I walk into the wrong room or something?" Gwen asked, looking around in amazement. Instead of a dark room with colourful lasers and thumping trance beats, she was in a brightly lit ballroom. She watched, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping as dancers in colourful gowns and gold masks swept past her, moving rhythmically to sweet strains of waltz drifting through the air. As she stood there gaping, a single dancer, the only dancer without a partner it seemed, appeared beside her from the glittering throng. He wore a shiny black mask of a fox, a pair of black tights and a long, white tunic that was open enough to show off his crescent moon pendant and smooth pale chest. Without considering how strange she would look in her baggy pants, chains and leather bustier (not to mention her messenger bag) if she were waltzing with this slim new arrival, she took his hands and met his waltz with her own. Mentally, she thanked her mother for making her take ballroom dancing classes. "Where am I?" She asked, trying to see her partners eyes from within the darkness of his mask. Instead of answering her, he dipped her down and pulled her back up. When vertical again, Gwen noticed something was wrong. She felt lighter. Looking down, she let out a small screech. Her clothing had changed. Now she was wearing a scandalously low cut black ballroom gown and was dripping with diamonds. Raising her hands to her head, she realized that she was indeed, wearing a diamond tiara, necklace and earrings. And full length black silk gloves. "Ho-ly shit." She exclaimed, and broke away from her dancing partner. "Where the hell am I?!" Jareth grinned under his mask at her reaction. He stood tall and raised his head a little, but he still couldn't help notice that she seemed to have a tattoo in a very interesting location. It made him wonder what else she was hiding under her clothes. That was beside the point. He had to make her fear him, which was where he went wrong with Sarah. "You are in a ballroom." He said finally, his cultured voice smooth and seductive. Gwen stopped looking around long enough to glare at him hotly. "No shit Sherlock, but WHY am I here?" She crossed her arms, more in an act of anger then any attempt at modesty. Jareth's interest was piqued, but he buried the feeling to look at later. "I have a gift for you." Jareth watched in perverse pleasure as knowing dawned over Gwen's face. Her foot moved to take a step back, then forward, as if to take a step towards him. Finally it rested where it was, her decision made to not challenge or back down. "A gift. What could it be. I am so intrigued." She said, feigning disinterest and sarcasm, but Jareth could see her pulse beating wildly in her throat. Jareth raised his hand and snapped his fingers. With the sharp sound, the dancers all disappeared mid-waltz and there was no one left but Jareth and Gwen, facing each other. They began to talk at the same time. "Impressive display---" "My gift is---" The both stopped talking, and stared at one another. After a few moments of tense silence, Jareth began again. "My gift is a Crystal. Just an ordinary Crystal, but-do you find something funny?" He asked, becoming angry. But Gwen just kept laughing. Jareth resisted the urge to grab her shoulders and shake her, to demand why she was laughing. He also resisted the childish urge to stamp his foot in frustration. Instead he opted to stand in cold, stony silence. Finally Gwen stopped laughing. She wiped the tears from her eyes, occasionally chuckling, then stopping. Eventually she noticed that Jareth was still standing there, but he had pushed his mask up so she could see his face. Gwen stopped short. Her mother had tried, but she hadn't captured his true likeness in her painting. She doubted anyone could. His cold, fiery blue eyes, the softness of his mouth or how he stared as if he could pull her soul from her eyes if he wished. Idly, she wondered for a moment how her mother could have resisted him. With a flash, she remembered Toby, and all her mother's stories of Jareth's cruelty. Oh dear, she thought, I've gone and stepped in it. "I asked if you find something funny." Though secretly pleased with her reaction, he said his piece with each word crisp and brief, as if laced with barely contained anger. "Yes." Gwen said snidely, "You were trying to offer me my dreams. But I know my dreams and I don't need you to give them to me, Jareth." She spit his name like a curse at him, and only with years of schooling his features did he repress a wince. His name gave her a little power over him. He wasn't going to let her onto that though. Jareth, the Goblin King was many things, but a fool wasn't one of them. "Very well," Jareth said with a careless shrug, "then you will travel the Labyrinth with no other choice." Gwen snorted. "Why, in the name of all people sane, would I travel the Labyrinth?"  
  
"Because, I have your mother." He smiled at her shocked look. A predatory smile. "You bastard." she whispered. Jareth let out a laugh.  
  
"This isn't the time for name calling. You might want a friend in high places, and you might not want to anger me. I have complete control over your mother." At those words he saw Gwen's body tense and for a moment he wondered if she was going to pounce on him. The look was certainly in her eye. No, she simply clenched her fists harder, 'til she drew blood and listened to what he said. Jareth smirked, but felt a strange urge to grab her hands and open them; for he knew what she was doing must have hurt. "I can make her tell me anything..." He paused, baiting her further "Or do anything." Gwen felt her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. "You may either choose to solve the Labyrinth or you may simply stay with me here and I will let my hostage go." He explained, his words were slow and languid, flowing over Gwen like liquid silk. She tensed and glared at him, fire spitting from her eyes. Fascinated, Jareth couldn't help but notice that her eyes turned black when she was truly angry. "I will solve the Labyrinth." Jareth simply tossed her a crystal. Gwen watched as it fell into her automatically cupped hands. Jareth caught her when she went unconscious as the crystal hit, her clothing changing back into what she was wearing before.  
  
"She feels so warm, so alive..." He thought to himself and, not realizing it, held her body to his. Without a thought, he lowered his head to her neck and breathed her scent deeply.  
  
"Vanilla, mint and something else..." Shaking his head at his own folly, Jareth moved them with a thought to his bedroom and laid her on his bed. He then looked out his window and realized that the sun in his kingdom was setting.  
  
Briefly he flirted with the idea of setting her in the Labyrinth asleep in the darkness, but he cast that idea aside. Though cruel, he wasn't a killer. Also, Jareth didn't want his song bird to be damaged. "Not tonight then young one, it's too late. Tomorrow you shall venture into my kingdom's heart, and be lost to me forever." As he spoke, Jareth brushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled. She would sleep in his bed tonight. And he wouldn't sleep at all.  
  
Gwen woke up on the hard dirt ground. "What the fuck?" She asked the air, and lifted her head to look around. She was on a dirt hill, up the hill there was a tree and a shallow cave, down the hill there was a towering stone wall. Hanging from the tree was a twisted clock with thirteen numbers. With a quick calculation, Gwen realized that she had more then twelve hours left. She got up and brushed the dirt off herself, noticing that her original clothing had returned. Turning back, she walked down to the wall and examined it, then stuck out a hand and waved it up and down. "Labyrinth, I presume." She said, addressing the wall. "My name's Gwen. Now that we've been formally introduced would you mind letting me in please?" She gently stroked one of the cool stones. At her touch the stones opened to create a large gap. "Thank you." She answered the movement and strode inside. She promptly forgot everything her mother had said about this part of the Labyrinth. Gwen had always liked the characters of the story better then the beginning. She began to walk. Five minutes later Gwen was wondering if she was walking in circles. An hour later she was singing to keep her thoughts from straying from the task at hand.  
  
"'Ello." Gwen looked over and down at the little blue worm.  
  
"Hello." She said, and her heart swelled. She knew who the little blue worm was, and what the little blue worm meant; she would go the other way and be at the castle in record time.  
  
Jareth was livid. Sarah watched calmly as he threw every inanimate object at the wall. Crystals shattered, clothes thumped dully and furniture splintered apart as they hit the walls with force equal to an earthquake. The walls easily withstood this barrage of material hurled at it until Jareth was too tired to throw anymore. He collapsed on his bed, panting and gripping his dark green silk sheets violently. Sarah walked over and gingerly, sat next to his sprawled form.  
  
"I told her about the Labyrinth, taught her what to do..." She said, softly, but Jareth was too caught up in his own tumultuous thoughts.  
  
"She was supposed to lose to me!" He growled at her, "I was to have her by the thirteenth hour!" Jareth glanced at the twisted clock and winced. "You knew I wouldn't let that happen." Sarah said sharply, but still to no avail. The attention of the Goblin King was elsewhere. It wasn't even an hour and Gwen had already made it three quarters of the way to the Goblin City outside the Castle Gates.  
  
"Three quarters of the way there... Three quarters..." The words rattled and rang inside Jareth's head, taunting him. "She knows everything I know about the Labyrinth, Jareth, everything." She said, trying to get his attention again. With a flash of inspiration he knew how to thwart Gwen's plan. Ignoring Sarah's irritated protests, he transformed into a white owl and flew over the Labyrinth, searching. Searching... 


	2. Chapter Two *Unfinished*

Chapter Two  
  
Karen walked with a cautioned slow. The worm had said it was the fastest way to the castle, not the least dangerous. She knew there was going to be some wrath from the goblin king, so she walked almost tiptoeing.  
She rounded a particularly sharp turn and froze in her steps. Her stomach plummeted to her feet, then raced her heart to her throat.  
There, in front of her was Jareth. Or was it? Slowly the parts of Karen's anatomy resumed their normal perches and she walked up to the statue. It was a perfect replica of Jareth, correct down to the last eyelash, meticulously carved in pale alabaster. She took this chance to study his face. Karen stepped onto the foot high, foot wide and long pedestal and stared into the stone eyes. There was a sadness to them, a bitter, strange, lonely sadness that tugged at her heartstrings. She shifted her eyes away from the hauntingly beautiful alabaster eyes and examined the rest of the face. His nose was aqualine, his mouth reagal, yes sensual. He had a strong jaw line and the barest hint of a cleft in his chin. His eyebrows slanted upwards, giving him an exotic look, something unearthly and different. His hair was perfectly manicured, naturally spiking up at the top and falling in a waterfall to brush his shoulders. His overall expression was that of boredom, arrogance and an inner sadness. She moved back a bit and studied his body. His neck was a regal column, smooth and very touchable looking. Karen felt a farmilliar feeling in her gut.  
"I find him attractive!" She gasped inwardly, her eyes expressing her shock. Sure his body was very well built, not very muscular, but toned, with long, powerful legs and... Her eyes traveled upwards and she felt a blush infuse her cheeks.  
"Like what you see?" A Britishly accented voice, tinged with amusment, asked her. Karen ripped her eyes from Jareth's... assets to his face and saw in shock that it was flesh and blood. His voice was light, almost flippant, but his eyes reflected a deeper, inner desire. 


End file.
